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    Autodidactic
    Autodidactic
    Autodidactic
    Ebook79 pages19 minutes

    Autodidactic

    By Don Kerr

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Shortlisted for the 1998 Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry

    Don Kerr's fifth poetry collection is a verbal joyride, an exuberant celebration of a book: a celebration of mountains and plains, of growing up and of being young, of being alive in the present moment and absorbing the feel of the road through the palms of your hands on the wheel. Autodidactic represents an erotics of the everyday, a tribute to place (and movement) and to family (and friends). This is not to say that Kerr sentimentalizes the ordinary, but rather that by examining it in the bright prairie sunlight, he is able to reveal its true extraordinariness. The deep-felt humour that is in many of the poems here does not arise from gilding events with comedy, but from the poet's seeing and drawing out of events what is truly and inherently comic within them. In this book Kerr is able to demonstrate the many shades of his voice and the many facets of his craft.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrick Books
    Release dateSep 15, 1997
    ISBN9781771311717
    Autodidactic
    Author

    Don Kerr

    Don Kerr is the author of numerous poetry collections, plays, and short stories. He served on the Saskatoon Public Library Board for eleven years, and as chair for five of those years. He was the first chair of the Saskatoon Heritage Society and the first chair of the Saskatoon Municipal Heritage Committee. He was also the Saskatchewan governor for the Heritage Canada Foundation. He lives in Saskatoon.

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      Book preview

      Autodidactic - Don Kerr

      Autodidactic

      Autodidactic

      DON KERR

      Brick Books

      CANADIAN CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

      Kerr, Don

      Autodidactic

      Poems.

      ISBN 0-919626-92-0

      I. Title.

      PS8571.E71A97 1997 C811'.54 C97-931181-0

      PR9199.3.E33A97 1997

      Copyright © Don Kerr, 1997.

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing programme, and the support of the University of Saskatchewan for this book. The support of the Ontario Arts Council is also gratefully acknowledged.

      Some of these poems have appeared in Arc, Quarry, The New Quarterly, and Matrix.

      The cover image, ‘Poplar Breeze’ (1986), is an acrylic stain by Robert Sinclair.

      Brick Books

      www.brickbooks.ca

      Box 20081

      431 Boler Road

      London, Ontario

      N6K 4G6

      Canada

      1 2 3 4 • 99 98 97

      to good drivers

      mildred & david

      to good hosts

      bernadette & wilf

      1.

      my father waited for the train to pass

      his arm resting in the sun   the hot winds of July

      travelling hundreds of miles

      the train slowly gathering speed

      he shut off the motor     the prairie

      rushed in          whispering

      under the train's roar     counting cars

      and forgot at twenty four     eyes looking

      so far   how far   freight train   freight train

      goin west   lumber and grain

      he took out his BA notebook

      remembering to write in the last

      oil change   the train

      whistling the next grid

      gathering speed     the century

      a third over   hand on the gear shift

      the sweet prairie rushing in

      my father waiting

      lets out the clutch

      gathering speed

      in a wake of spun gravel

      2.

      my father read the paper

      as if the news were important

      he jotted his mileage in notebooks

      he could keep in a shirt pocket

      When my friend Ed got older

      he kept seeing in his own face

      the face of his father

      and as the days went one way

      memory went another

      the Philadelphia of his youth

      the exciting turn-of-the-century

      babble of new life on Hester Street

      this side of the

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